Months After Second Avenue Subway Opening, Safety Testing Is Not Finished

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A safety worker monitored the Second Avenue subway station at 72nd Street in Manhattan on Tuesday. Safety crews have been posted along the new subway line to watch for fires until the safety testing is complete.CreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times

In a rush to finish New York City’s long-awaited Second Avenue subway by a New Year’s Day deadline imposed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority failed to complete final safety testing before opening the line to the public, according to oversight reports submitted to the federal government.

When the stations opened on Jan. 1, the fire alarm system was still being tested and more than 17,000 defects found during inspections had not been fixed, according to the reports. One report noted that the large number of outstanding problems indicated that “quality was compromised for schedule acceleration.”

In the months leading up to the opening, officials raised concerns about whether the authority could finish all of the necessary work by the end of 2016. But Mr. Cuomo insisted that the line be ready on time — to prove that government can do big things and to expand service on the city’s overcrowded transit system. Mr. Cuomo, who runs the authority, regularly visited the stations to press contractors to finish the work.

Now more than eight months after the lavish opening, complete with sparkling wine and an elegant midnight celebration on New Year’s Eve, the subway line is still operating under a temporary safety certificate, according to the Federal Transit Administration.

Crews have had to be posted along the line to watch for fires — an expensive effort meant to serve as a stopgap. The project is not expected to earn its final safety certificate until November, according to the reports, which were prepared for the Federal Transit Administration and obtained by The Times through a Freedom of Information law request.

John McCarthy, a spokesman for the authority, defended the authority on Wednesday. “The stations on the new Second Avenue line are completely safe and they have been since the day they opened,” Mr. McCarthy said in a statement. “They feature state-of-the-art technology for fire protection, closed-circuit monitoring and new public address systems — any suggestion that safety was at all compromised to meet the deadline to open is patently false.”

Though there have been no serious mishaps on the Second Avenue line, transportation experts have questioned the governor’s obsession with opening by Jan. 1 and the costs associated with finishing the project and monitoring safety after trains already started running.

“It would be better to wait a couple more months and get it right, rather than prematurely have a ribbon-cutting ceremony to benefit the governor,” said Larry Penner, a former official at the Federal Transit Administration who oversaw grants for projects in New York and New Jersey.

Officials at the authority have not publicly discussed its safety precautions on the new line or provided updates on the continuing work to the authority’s board at monthly meetings. The outstanding problems on the line, according to the authority, include minor issues such as fixing door closures and signage and are akin to a punch list of issues that are usually addressed before a final home inspection. But the oversight reports themselves do not detail all the items on the list or whether they might be more substantial.

It is unclear how much the continuing work on the Second Avenue subway will cost or how the authority plans to pay for it. Mr. Cuomo and authority officials have received withering criticism over their handling of the city’s subway crisis and are struggling to fund a roughly $800 million rescue plan to fix the broader subway system.

The authority’s chairman, Joseph J. Lhota, said the quality of construction work was not sacrificed to meet the deadline and that the “punch list” items remaining after the opening did not impact safety. “The project was not opened prematurely,” Mr. Lhota said in an interview. “It was opened when it was safe to be opened.”

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has made infrastructure projects a central focus of his administration as he burnishes his image for a possible presidential run. But the governor’s hands-on involvement in the Second Avenue subway is an example of how he tends to move aggressively on glittery, new projects, while more mundane concerns like maintenance, whose negligence has contributed to the subway system’s collapse, have languished.

Jon Weinstein, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said in a statement: “The M.T.A. does safety inspections for the entire system and they certified that the Second Avenue subway stations were safe to open.”

On a recent evening, a worker in a neon “safety” vest and a hard hat patrolled the 72nd Street station, but declined to discuss his job. Another man in similar clothes paced the mezzanine level at the 86th Street station. At the 96th Street station, two M.T.A. workers said crews in neon vests were there regularly to check for safety problems.

Michael Horodniceanu, the former president of capital construction at the authority who oversaw the Second Avenue subway, said he was confident that any safety issues were addressed before the opening, even if all of the testing was not done.

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When the Second Avenue subway opened in January, more than 17,000 defects found during inspections had not been fixed, according to reports submitted to the federal government.CreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times

“The governor may have pushed, but we would not have opened anything if it was not 100 percent safe,” Mr. Horodniceanu said.

Regarding posting safety crews along the line, Mr. Horodniceanu said: “There is nothing safer than having a fire watch. It’s like having a fireman there.”

When the line opened, the authority agreed to address the outstanding problems within 60 days, according to the oversight reports. When officials missed that deadline, it was extended to April 15. By the end of May — the most recent report available — there were still 7,264 defects.

Philip Plotch, an assistant professor at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City who is writing a book about the Second Avenue subway, said he was concerned that the authority had not been transparent about the unfinished work and that it was not clear whether its board members knew about it. Fixing these problems after the opening is more expensive because trains are running round-the-clock, he said, limiting the time crews have to do work.

“We the public have no idea how much it costs and what they’re taking money away from,” Mr. Plotch said.

But the authority had not revealed that final testing for the fire alarms at each station was not finished. On Dec. 29, 2016, a safety committee at New York City Transit issued a certificate that allowed the stations to open on a temporary basis. One committee member did not sign the certificate, the reports note, though they do not identify the member or provide a reason for the omission.

The company that prepared the oversight reports, Urban Engineers of New York, said in a January report that it was “concerned that the certification process has been circumvented” regarding safety.

Steven Kulm, a spokesman for the Federal Transit Administration, said the safe operation of the Second Avenue subway was the responsibility of New York City Transit and a state safety oversight agency called the Public Transportation Safety Board.

“The F.T.A. does not have a role in the daily operation of the service, nor was it involved in the decision by N.Y.C.T. to issue an interim safety certificate prior to [Second Avenue subway]commencing revenue service,” Mr. Kulm said in a statement.

The agency does, however, provide an oversight role for federally funded projects like the Second Avenue subway, which received $1.3 billion in federal funding. The goal of the oversight reports is to examine whether a project is executed efficiently and the recipient should receive funds in the future.

The reports repeatedly question the project’s rising costs. The first phase of the Second Avenue subway, which includes three new stations, was expected to cost $4.4 billion, according to the authority, but the full costs are not yet known.

The reports outline other problems, including water leaks at the 96th Street station. When the line opened, there were 75 active leaks at the station, according to a December 2016 report. The authority has had problems with leaks in the past — the Hudson Yards station that opened on the Far West Side of Manhattan in 2015 had major water leaks.

In the months before the Second Avenue subway opened, Kent Haggas, an independent engineer for the project, provided monthly updates to the authority’s board. But Mr. Haggas has not appeared at the board meetings this year to provide further updates.

Mr. Penner, the former federal transit official, said the delays on the first phase of the subway did not bode well for the second phase, which would extend the line to 125th Street in East Harlem.

“You want the Second Avenue subway to be shown in the most positive light, especially when you’re looking for federal financing,” Mr. Penner said. “Why would you take so long to clean up these loose ends?”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Safety Certification Remains Incomplete Along Second Avenue Subway. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe